Hi!

Hi, I’m Olga Dobrovidova.

I am a science and environment journalist, communicator and educator based in France. I have been writing about policy-relevant science, from climate change to vaccines, for over 15.

I help people make sense of the stories politicians tell about science. I’ve been doing that as:

  • A writer, editor, podcaster, and producer – I find these stories and make sense of them so that I can inform my audiences. I have bylines in Nature, Science, MIT Technology Review, BBC, STAT, Undark, VTimes, Meduza, N+1, and other Russian and international media (portfolio)
  • Copywriter, media trainer, strategic comms consultant – I help researchers get better at telling their science stories to politicians and to the publics. I now work in strategic scicomm for climate change research while still freelancing as a journalist covering topics other than climate change,
  • Science journalism and scicomm instructor, course designer, translator – I teach others to make sense of these stories so we have strength in numbers. Until 2023, I taught at ITMO University, Tyumen State University School of Advanced Studies, and HSE in Moscow,
  • Community leader, mentor, and volunteer – I support and empower other science journalists and communicators, again so that there’s more of us. I was the founding VP of the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) in 2019-2025 and led AKSON, Russia’s scicomm association, until 2022.

A CV in English is available here.

Some of my story highlights:

  • Scientists in Russia struggle in a world transformed by its war in Ukraine [Science]
  • The Soviets turned the Volga River into a machine. Then the machine broke. [MIT Technology Review]
  • Calling embryo editing ‘premature,’ Russian authorities seek to ease fears of a scientist going rogue [STAT]

Please note I don’t currently cover climate change due to a conflict of interest.

I love instructional design and teaching at an undergraduate level and above.

  • In 2017-2023, I developed and taught the core discipline of multimedia science journalism for the Master in Science Communication graduate program at ITMO University. It was a two-semester course which included a writing workshop and a team project in science media management;
  • Over the years, I’ve also developed and taught courses on explanatory writing, popular science writing for researchers and faculty, climate change and the media, longform popular science writing, and digital journalism 101;
  • I’ve built and run many smaller workshops on pitching, storytelling, science news, fact checking and so on, in English and Russian, for clients including the national Polytechnic Museum in Moscow and the WHO;
  • As a certified EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) teacher, I taught science communication as an English-language elective at the Tyumen State University School of Advanced Studies. In 2022, my course topped the school charts in “Best Assignments” and “Best Feedback”; 
  • I studied instructional design at ITMO University, Olin College Virtual Summer Institute, York University, and LLLab. I then designed and ran a “meta” workshop on designing basic science communication training at OpenSciComm in Serbia in 2022;
  • I particularly enjoy designing educational games and have developed a few formats of hybrid training for journalists and comms strategists.

I occasionally talk about Russian science and environmental policy to journalists and podcasters, focusing on the stories I follow closely or report myself. I am also fairly familiar with audio and video reporting as well as basic editing and post production. A few conversations I like are listed here.

Sputnik vs. the West: How the Russian government is discrediting Western vaccines [The Inoculation]
Sputnik V: International Success, Domestic Problems [The Russia File]
The Quest for a Coronavirus Vaccine [WHYY The Pulse]
Putin and the planet [BBC The Climate Question]
Setting up a permafrost observatory, and regulating transmissible vaccines [Science Podcast]

I also enjoy translating great things into Russian.

I’ve translated two books and two MOOCs so far as well as a lot of news and social media content.

I translated this MOOC into Russian and curated additional content for the Russian-language version.
Following up on the success of the first course, I also translated the second MOOC on COVID-19 vaccines.

To discuss new exciting projects in any of these fields, send me a message through the Contact page.

Oh, and I have a science journalism newsletter in English:

  • A mission statement, sure
    … We need more science journalists. Well, we need more journalists full stop, but I am perfectly happy to get there by making more science journalists (this is also my accountability ceiling of sorts – someone else will just have to make more sports journalists I’m afraid). I would often add we need more science journalists so that even the most bizarre and arcane and beautiful story can ultimately find its storyteller.